Kyung-Wha Chung

Korea's longstanding heritage of stage performance fostered several classical artists who gained worldwide recognition, even though familiarity with European traditions developed there only recently. Kyung-Wha Chung became the first Korean instrumentalist to reach that level of international prominence. Although she built her reputation principally through solo appearances, she also performed regularly with her siblings—pianist and conductor Myung-Whun and cellist Myung-Wha—in the Chung Trio.

Seoul-born in 1948, she initially studied piano before an early encounter with the violin at age six prompted a permanent change of instrument. After lessons with Shin Sang Chul, she appeared publicly for the first time at nine, performing Mendelssohn’s E-minor Concerto with the Seoul Philharmonic Orchestra. At twelve she undertook a tour of Japan; the next year she relocated to New York and entered the Juilliard School, where Ivan Galamian remained her principal teacher until 1971.

During the late 1960s she shared first prize at the Leventritt Competition with Pinchas Zukerman and appeared as soloist with both the New York Philharmonic and the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra. Her London debut took place in 1970, when she performed the Tchaikovsky Concerto with the city’s Symphonic Orchestra. Shortly afterward she broadened her studies under Josef Gingold, Szymon Goldberg, Paul Makanowitzky, and Joseph Szigeti. Her recital partners have included Peter Frankl, Itamar Golan, Radu Lupu, Stephen Kovacevich, and Krystian Zimerman, while among the conductors with whom she has collaborated are André Previn, George Solti, and Lorin Maazel; her brother Myung-Whun has also led the orchestra on several occasions when she appeared as soloist.

Entering the new century, she sustained an intensive schedule of more than one hundred concerts annually. England’s Sunday Times listed her among the leading violinists of the late twentieth century. In the mid-1990s she received eight curtain calls after playing Bartók’s Second Violin Concerto at Paris’s Théâtre des Champs-Élysées in a concert marking Pierre Boulez’s seventieth birthday; EMI captured the event, which later received the Gramophone Award. Her discography, exceeding twenty releases and issued chiefly on Decca, encompasses the concertos of Beethoven, Berg, Bruch, Elgar, Mendelssohn, Saint-Saëns, Sibelius, Tchaikovsky, and Walton.

As the Chung Trio, the three siblings served as the United Nations’ inaugural goodwill ambassadors against narcotics, presenting concerts in support of anti-drug initiatives in Rome, New York, Chicago, and additional cities worldwide. Kyung-Wha Chung has received widespread acclaim both for her vibrant stage presence and for performances marked by intensity, inspiration, and near-flawless execution, securing her place among the foremost violinists of her time.